I'm looking for advice on how best to manage and maintain ~10 websites when I move to a dedicated linux server.

Do you have a different unix logon for each of your sites ?
Do you manage domains and users through a control panel or with the shell ?
Do you have an recommendations for backup options ?

Thanks

I manage my domains through a control panel. I personally use WHM which has an excellent interface for managing multiple sites.

Backups - I recommend getting a second hard drive on your server OR manually downloading to your own computer at intervals (every other day, or every week, etc)

I do have a different control panel login for each site though. This allows me to manage the traffic stats, emails, ftp controls, (basically everything) for each site individually.

-matthew

Me and my partner manage users and accounts through CPANEL and WHM, and anything else is through SSH.

Backups are done offsite for all of our sites weekly or daily depending on content.

Each site has its own cpanel login, and can be managed through a WHM setup "reseller account".

All in all though, the cpanel and whm are not used as much as SSH.

Thanks Matthew and HavokMedia

Looks like WHM and CPanel are popular options.

Unless your hosting provide Cpanel for free, you might want to also consider Webmin with Virtualmin which is free.

I use Virtualmin to create accounts for each of my sites. But I do basically all other jobs on the shell.

Some sites I put them on the same account so that I can share files (without having to do messy user-permission). Some I put on different account so that I can allow others like partners to login.

For backup I use rsync to sync the files to my local machine everyday. The first copy will take a while but after that the daily copy will be fast because rsync just take into account the changes.

Ps: Do a seach on those bold words to learn more.

cPanel and WHM are much better than the rest. It's worth paying the extra.